Submersed
by ice shredder
Summary: After Vesper's death, Bond vowed he'd do everything within his power not to fail another girl. Enjoy!


**Title: Submersed**

 **Author: ice shredder**

 **Fandom: James Bond franchise**

 **Warnings/Spoilers: nothing big. Can be seen as post-QoS, pre Skyfall.**

 **Summary: After Vesper's death, Bond vowed he'd do everything within his power not to fail another girl.**

He remembered the roar of the flames devouring the Perla De Las Dunas compound and feeling like he was in hell-

 _Large, doe brown eyes stared stared calmly at him as he frantically tried to yank the iron gate of the submersed elevator. She wasn't coming over. Why wasn't she coming over? Didn't she realize how much he needed her? How there'd never be another like her to fill the hole in his heart? She continued to gaze at him until she couldn't take his struggling anymore._

 _The next thing he knew her slim, dainty fingers wrapped around his large ones. That's when James Bond made his first mistake._

 _He let his guard down._

He felt his heart drop when that single gunshot rang out clear as day and jerked his head in its direction. _Oh God...no please tell me that wasn't-_

 _"Looks like ya just lost another one! Aha ha ha!"_

Bond recalled the rush of anger and determination that filled his entire body at Greene's taunt. He'd already lost Vesper to Quantum. He refused to give them the satisfaction of taking Camille.

Adrenaline flooded his system as he hauled Greene up by the hair and collar, the fight all but forgotten as his mind switched into rescue mode. _I am NOT going to fail this time, dammit!_

The frantic search for his female companion was the longest five minutes of his life. With every room ablaze he could barely make out where he was going. But he pushed on, his whole being tuned into finding Camille. He was going to save her even if it killed him.

He remembered what she'd told him back in the semi-darkness of that sinkhole after their plane had been shot out of the sky. When she finally opened up and told him the real reason she infiltrated Quantum was for revenge against General Medrano for the murder and rape of her entire family.

 _"I was too young to be any trouble. So he smiled at me. And set the house on fire."_

Sweating profusely under his all black outfit, Bond ducked as a set of metal railing came clattering down almost on top of his head. _Please be alive._ He chanted as the spy was on the verge of a panic attack. He wouldn't forgive himself if he found her burned to death-

 _Vesper brought his hand to her lips, giving it a final farewell kiss. Then she shoved herself to the far end of the elevator's cage, gulping in water. His movements redoubled, shaking the bars for all he was worth but it was too late. Horrified he watched as the love of his life gave a few spasmodic jerks before going still. Dark hair waving like seaweed in the current._

 _Her lovely face went slack just as he wrenched open the jammed doors._

Suddenly he barged into a large suite. The fire was so loud it almost drowned out a female's whimpering at the corner of the room.

 _I can hear Camille!_ Bond thought as he spotted the young woman huddled against the far wall hiding her face against her knees with her arms wrapped around her legs. Looking like a small, terrified little girl.

Without hesitation Bond rushed over and threw his arms around her protectively. Shielding her quaking body from the roaring flames that were inching closer to their position. It reminded him of another time when he wrapped his arm around a soaking wet Vesper in that shower stall at the Casino Royale just after she'd helped him kill an assassin in that stairwell...but he shoved the image from his mind. Vesper was dead. Camille was not. And he intended to keep it that way.

Save the girl.

Extract revenge.

Move on with his life.

To the end of his days Bond would never forget Camille's panicked whispers, or the way she stared at the raging inferno with wide, terrified eyes as she relived that horrible day in her youth trapped as her family home burned to the ground.

He had enough. It was time to escape.

He spotted the gun she used to kill Medrano and cocked it.

 _"Close your eyes."_

With the surety of a man who lived by the gun he waited till the heat made a few tiles crack and fall to the floor exposing a gas cell powering the building. Without hesitation he raised the weapon and fired-

 _He pulled Vesper's limp body onto the collapsed roof of the building he'd been fighting in. Her soaked, torn red dress mocked his dreams of a life with this woman as he frantically began administering CPR...trying to breathe life into her corpse. His throat burned from holding back heavy, wet sobs from escaping and attracting unwanted attention, while Vesper remained unresponsive on the water-logged, splintered roof._

 _He buried his soggy face in the crook of her alabaster neck, weeping like a lost child. His dreams of marrying her, starting a family with her were gone. What was the point of leaving the service now? This wasn't right. The prince was supposed to rescue the princess from the bad guys and live happily ever after. That was how it went in the fairy tales he used to enjoy as a child. But this wasn't a fairytale and his princess wasn't waking up._

 _It'd been less than twenty-four hours since that life-shattering event and Bond still couldn't breathe. He hadn't been ready for her to be taken so suddenly and he still wasn't. He needed her, needed her so badly, more than the air he breathed but she wasn't coming back. It didn't matter how many men he killed to avenge her. It wouldn't reverse the outcome. She wasn't coming back. This was the harsh reality the grieving spy had to face. She was never coming back-_

-a single shot at the gas cell across the room, shattering it instantly, letting in the dry desert air. He pulled Camille towards the opening with a clipped shout. Then they were out, picking over rocks until he helped her down onto the sand.

In the distance he saw the limping figure of Dominic Greene and on impulse told Camille to wait for him until he finished his business with this monster. Miss. Fields' lifeless, oil-soaked body draped across his hotel bed by Greene as a warning demanded retribution, and he was all too willing to oblige.

After he dropped Camille off at the station he hopped a plane to Kazan, Russia. There was one more important stop he had to make. He just hoped he was in time.

When he arrived he stopped the undercover agent posing as Yusef Kabria's girlfriend by telling her the truth of who this man was and to tell the people she worked for to check their seals for a leak. As Karin passed Bond by she quietly thanked him.

Leaving Vesper's necklace in the snow felt like closure. He spared another woman from sharing her awful fate.

...

Bond would end up working with many women over the course of his illustrious career from all walks of life. But a curious habit stemming from his first mission as a double-0 would forever separate him from his peers. It became the one fatal weakness former friends and enemies alike wouldn't hesitate to use against him in the field.

No matter what he would always serve Queen and country and protect British/American interests however, 007 vowed he would do everything in his power to keep the girls he worked with alive. If she died on his watch Bond stopped behaving like a suave master spy. Instead he became a one-man army, taking whatever resources he had at hand to hunt down the persons responsible and avenge her.

After Vesper's death, Bond swore he wouldn't fail another girl. No matter how many times M warned him not to make it personal he simply couldn't help himself. It galled the man to explain to his boss and allies why he fought tooth and nail to keep them from death.

It meant every woman saved was another night he could mute the screams of the ones he failed at bay. If they died he didn't deserve the luxury of a good night's sleep. Hence Bond punished himself with multiple glasses of his favorite dry martini.

It meant he didn't have to submerse himself in Vespers to drive away the guilt and the rage. Or torture his mind thinking about all the _whys_ and _coulda, woulda, shoulda beens._ Or why because of _her,_ he'd trained himself from getting overly attached. His armor thickened with the passage of time. It had gotten so refined that no matter how many women he slept with-which was more than he could count-only the most perceptive picked up on this subtle distancing.

Bond cursed Vesper's ability to haunt him from the grave. Just when he thought he'd shaken her ghost off forever, little things would remind him of her. There was always a little bit of _her_ in the women he met. He smelled her in the whiff of a spicy perfume. Heard her sassy tone and dry humor when a strong woman matched wits with him. Caught glimpses of her lithe form in swaying hips and elegant dresses. But no matter how many stunning shades of eyes he peered into, none could hold a candle to Vesper's dark, enigmatic pools.

And because he longed for someone he couldn't have, he sought relief in the arms of women he would never see past his mission. Since the Vesper-shaped hole in his heart would never heal, his addiction to the fairer sex was an eternal one.

So to ensure he wouldn't put the girls in any more danger just by knowing him, Bond took great care to store the most important details in his memory before leaving them behind. Just as he remembered how _she_ looked. Forever young and beautiful.

It'd be rude of him to forget.

Bond could never admit to wanting a family of his own. The only woman he'd ever love was dead and she'd been a mystery till the very end. The irony was as bitter as the martini he drank in her memory.

Ice cold, shaken not stirred with a sharp aftertaste.

 **-end**

 **Hope y'all enjoyed this one. A random plot bunny bit me at work and wouldn't leave me alone till I wrote this puppy out, in anticipation of 'SPECTRE' which I cannot WAIT to see when it comes out in November! It's gonna be wild people, so if you're going to see it, brace yourselves, lol. :P**

 **Reviews are fuel. Love ya. :)**


End file.
